For seniors in the business and economic classes, January means participating in the Apprentice Project.

The project, designed by longtime business teacher Mr. Dave Santos ’85, replicates real-life business plan implementation from product design to merchandising.

Ultimately, it becomes a competition between the two senior business classes and the senior honors economic class, all taught by Santos.

Each class starts its own “company” that needs to develop a new product to be sold to the CBA community. Each company then creates a business plan that is presented to the CBA administration for approval.

Once approved, the classes market their new products to the community prior to sales beginning. The sales period is a four-day stretch in January (12-15).

The competition comes into play when the final sales are tallied. The winning company is awarded the highest grade on the project.

Of course, there is a charitable component to the project, as each company donates its earnings to a charity of its choice.

This year, the products include:

• Card Holder and Face Masks by Academy’s Finest (Max Ferraro ’21, mferraro21@cbastudents.org) to benefit the Barstool Small Business Fund
• Christian Brothers Boxed Logo T-Shirt by CBA Supreme (Hunter Lane ’21, hlane21@cbastudents.org) to benefit the Testicular Cancer Society
• Coach Billet Jersey T-Shirt by Billet Group (Jack Conway ’21, jconway21@cbastudents.org) to benefit the Wounded Warrior Foundation

“These products allow members of the CBA community to show their school pride,” Ferraro said. “This year, a real challenge that we have had was the reduced number of people in school to both sell and buy the products, which has forced us to try to sell items online.”

The seniors primarily sell their products in the main lobby during morning arrival, but as Ferraro said, the groups are also accepting inquiries for online sales due to virtual learning policies.